Henry Kissinger turns 100

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

People don’t remember this now but the neocons weren’t not at all a fan of Kissinger and in fact viewed him to be too weak on communism . Many of them had supported Reagan in 76 precisely so Kissinger could be replaced by someone who was more Hawkish in general and in 1980 one for Ford’s demands to be VP was that Kissinger gets brought back and Reagan said no to that :

I think neocons hated Kissinger for his role in détente. In fact, I think “neoconservatism” was a reaction to détente.

That is very true:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/when-you-cant-stand-your-candidate

In 1972 and the rest of the 1970s, the question of changing parties did not arise for many of us. Jackson supporters were hawks, and the alternative—the détente policies of Nixon and Kissinger—were no attraction. The GOP of those days seemed to be the party of the Chamber of Commerce and the country club, not the conservative party William F. Buckley was fighting for—and finally got in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the presidency. Moreover, we thought we could win this battle within the Democratic party. It seemed we had in 1976, when the man who appeared to be second-most-hawkish after Jackson won the nomination—Jimmy Carter, who had as noted put Jackson's name in nomination in 1972. It was only when Carter turned out to be following his own brand of McGovernism on foreign policy that, in 1980, many of us (myself included) supported the Republican nominee and—whether before or after the election—made the switch.

I'm rather neutral on Kissinger after all these years.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Here's Anthony Bourdain on Kissinger in 2001:

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.

While I enjoy Bourdain generally, he is certainly no historical authority, and this notion that US intervention in Cambodia was some secret shadow invasion of a neutral country that has arisen over time is simply not true.

The American intervention in the Cambodian Civil War was in the vein of the same containment policy to assist the Khmer Republic against the Khmer Rouge insurgency primarily supported by Maoist China and secondarily supported by the North Vietnam/USSR block. The two factions within the war were certainly not neutral at all before direct US involvement, and the Khmer Rouge asked North Vietnam in 1970 to help intervene in their insurgency which quickly captured the eastern half of the nation. The US involvement was also not some secret thing at all, as the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 extensively dealt with Laos and Cambodia, in addition to Vietnam (and it would be the Khmer Rouge that violated cease-fire calls that included pauses in US operations).

Now this does not mean containment itself has strong moral, ethical, or legal justification, nor does it mean that trying to help the erratic and authoritarian Lon Nol in Cambodia against the Khmer Rouge was a good idea at all. And this also doesn't mean that the way in which the US carried out bombing operations was effective at all---some historians contend these bombings are what allowed Khmer Rouge to actually gain popular support within Cambodia. But these sort of critiques are applicable to so much more of the Cold War and plenty of other parties, including local third-world parties as well.

The millions of lives lost and sufferings of peoples tell the stories of these unethical decisions by the US and other factions, and Cambodia today is justified for hating Kissinger's guts. But to frame Kissingerian foreign policy as throwing Cambodia to the dogs is disingenuous. Unlike broad arguments that the "US helped cause the rise of ISIS," the Khmer Rouge was always foreign-influenced and not some native reaction against US imperialism.

To be fair, the Nixon Administration repeatedly called for the Congress to continue funding monies for the bombing of Cambodia to provide air support for its government fighting the Khmer Rouge.  This was the issue that made all Democrats doves.  Very few Democrats supported monies for bombing Cambodia in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords were signed.  Now the Democratic Party (and a good chunk of the GOP) was pretty war-weary and skeptical of what good bombing would do.  They seemed to be legitimately taken by surprise of the genocidal nature of the Pol Pot regime.  Even George McGovern expressed regret to the point where he stated once that it would have been appropriate for America to militarily return to Southeast Asia to deal with that situation, but people were not having that in the 1970s.

That we support World Leaders that are thugs in military uniforms or Armani suits does not make us responsible for every negative event (including genocides) that happen in other parts or the World.  The same liberals (and some conservatives, to be sure) that condemn Kissinger for being supportive of genocides are the same folks who openly question whether or not America is to be the Policeman of the World, yet intervening in many of the genocides mentioned here would have meant that we would be functioning as exactly that.  This debate goes on to this day, and it's something of a trans-partisan debate.  

I have come to the view that America should not be the Policeman of the World, and that our position of World Leadership should not (indeed, cannot) extend that far.  Yet we ought to realize that Americans, for all their faults, value human life in ways that not all of the World does.  Those who endless criticize "Western Civilization" and seek to tear it down by any means necessary (and there are some of those folks here) ought to consider in real terms the value on human life non-Western Civilizations place on human life.  This is not a mystery, and it can be measured.  Killing the whole of your enemy, lest they rise up and kill you, is the essence of genocide, but it's a view of the world that holds sway in far too many societies in the World today.  And those societies are often located in nations where outsiders drew their boundaries, and where loyalty to tribe trumps loyalty to the central government.  This is the World Henry Kissinger was SoS in, and it's still a good part of the World today.  Henry Kissinger's job was to serve America's best interest.  On balance he did that.  This is certainly not to ignore or to minimize the collateral damage to human life that some of his foreign policy choices had.  Those decisions, however, have to be evaluated in terms of what the outcome would likely have been had the opposite course of action been taken, and that is much harder to guage.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

People don’t remember this now but the neocons weren’t not at all a fan of Kissinger and in fact viewed him to be too weak on communism . Many of them had supported Reagan in 76 precisely so Kissinger could be replaced by someone who was more Hawkish in general and in 1980 one for Ford’s demands to be VP was that Kissinger gets brought back and Reagan said no to that :

I don't think I ever want to meet someone who thought that Kissinger was insufficiently hawkish. What a terrifying thing to consider.

It's cause they opposed detente and thought he was too weak on communism. This group included people like Scoop Jackson and during the 1976 primaries the neocons went all in for Reagan as one core message of his 1976 campaign was the fact that he opposed detente.

Kissinger was not a neocon, and was pretty much the epitome of Realpolitck that so many neocons disliked.

You're not wrong. Kissinger's whole shtick was make friends with enemies, and preserve stability at all costs, even if it meant doing very harmful things.



The Neocons wanted a more DIRECTLY confrontational approach. Not the slimey behind the scenes realist approach.

Yup and that was a huge reason why so many conservatives and hawkish democrats rallied behind Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and that is Reagan was opposed to Detente and supported taking a more confrontational approach against the Soviets which he did as President but still applied some Realpolick principles which disappointed people like Jack Kemp.

After the collapse of the soviet union, the Neocons took all the brakes of as they believed the end of the cold war would give the US the ability to remake the world in our image . This is also why neocons turned hard against internationalism in the 1990s as they viewed international organizations as an impediment to their goals and we would see all this implemented in the Bush years.

Mostly all Democratic hawks supported Carter in 1976; less so in 1980:

In 1972 and the rest of the 1970s, the question of changing parties did not arise for many of us. Jackson supporters were hawks, and the alternative—the détente policies of Nixon and Kissinger—were no attraction. The GOP of those days seemed to be the party of the Chamber of Commerce and the country club, not the conservative party William F. Buckley was fighting for—and finally got in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the presidency. Moreover, we thought we could win this battle within the Democratic party. It seemed we had in 1976, when the man who appeared to be second-most-hawkish after Jackson won the nomination—Jimmy Carter, who had as noted put Jackson's name in nomination in 1972. It was only when Carter turned out to be following his own brand of McGovernism on foreign policy that, in 1980, many of us (myself included) supported the Republican nominee and—whether before or after the election—made the switch.